Sarah Palin: Senate kingmaker

Riding a four-endorsement winning streak in Republican Senate primaries this year, the former Alaska governor swept into a blueberry patch outside Kansas City this weekend looking to apply her Midas touch to the latest fortunate recipient. This time it’s Sarah Steelman, a former state treasurer running in a fractured Missouri Tuesday primary to decide who gets to take on vulnerable Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November.

Story Continued Below

With Steelman, Palin is making perhaps her boldest bet yet. Steelman — who, like Palin, likes to hunt, staunchly opposes abortion rights and touts herself as a maverick — has been running third against businessman John Brunner, who’s poured millions of his personal fortune into the race, and six-term Rep. Todd Akin.

“They fear her,” Palin told a few hundred people gathered at a sprawling farm a few miles from the Kansas border Friday night. “She’s the candidate in this race who scares them because she won’t go to Washington to just go along, to get along. You have that choice to choose, results over rhetoric. Convictions over consultants and Missouri over Washington.”

A win would only enhance Palin’s reputation as the most powerful down-ballot force in Republican politics.

“She’s a rock star right now in Republican Senate primaries. She’s hit a pretty strong streak,” said Scott Bensing, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “She gives the impression that she has deeply held beliefs she’s willing to take on water for and doesn’t really care what her critics think. She comes off resolute and principled.”

Though Palin tweaks her formula from race to race, her picks suggest she wants at least some of these traits in a candidate: A robust grassroots operation, an anti-establishment instinct and the aura of an underdog.

Detractors would argue she makes her own fortune by swooping in with her blessing after watching a race trend towards a candidate. Mourdock received her backing 10 days before the primary, by which time he had overtaken Sen. Richard Lugar in polls.

But that wasn’t the case with Fisher, a relatively unknown state senator and decided underdog in Nebraska who came out of nowhere to win after a critical late endorsement from Palin. Nor is it true with Steelman.

And while other politicians, at times, are willing to make an endorsement based on a staff or consultant relationship, there’s a sense that Palin doesn’t operate that way.